jacobstephaniehttps://jacobstephanie.wordpress.com
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The Future of Learning, ALT Universityhttps://jacobstephanie.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/the-future-of-learning-alt-university/
https://jacobstephanie.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/the-future-of-learning-alt-university/#commentsWed, 11 Apr 2012 16:14:30 +0000http://jacobstephanie.wordpress.com/?p=966Continue reading →]]>Working from Bryan Alexander’s alt.residential scenario of the future, I decided to make a short video about a future institution of higher education.
My initial proposition was:

I intend to create a tutorial video for the alt.residentialesque future scenario. This will be the introduction to a higher education propelled by self-directed learning. This learning is the primary need for the physical institution, it is a laziness of people. The information is already there, people just limit themselves to what they force themselves to do.

This tutorial will instruct the lazies and coax them into doing, but is merely a school entrance instruction video. Subliminal change to people’s flawed reasoning (it would be ideally, that is).

I created this video by going through old videos and pictures on my computer I’d take in the past. It was fun to relive many experiences and they work to adapt them to this idea. I used VideoPad to edit, and only borrowed the final song.

I really enjoyed this process, even though the video may only be mildly funny if you are on the same page as my odd sense of humor, but at least I had fun making it! The time really flew, in the end I had to wrap it up because I was running out of time!

I hope you enjoy!

]]>https://jacobstephanie.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/the-future-of-learning-alt-university/feed/1jacobstephanieGods and Devilshttps://jacobstephanie.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/gods-and-devils/
https://jacobstephanie.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/gods-and-devils/#commentsSun, 08 Apr 2012 14:42:49 +0000http://jacobstephanie.wordpress.com/?p=958Continue reading →]]>It is the twenties, I am this generation and lost as a lonely child in the supermarket. I am not apart of the Lost Generation, I am living in the Lost Decade, for it is the twenties of the 2000s, 2022. Sadly enough, this scenario of the future is the most beneficial for someone in my shoes, despite the fact I think it is the most plausible of Bryan Alexander’s scenarios of the future.

Why this happened:

2007 began the Great Recession, and with this we began to see the public separation from economic policy. With this I mean, this is not the first time the economy has turned down, this happens often because of its cyclical nature. However, this is the first time the public as a whole is unable to react to government manipulation for economic bounce back. This extended recession leads to the slow disintegration of the European Union, separate economies dependent on this unity begin to crumble and citizens begin to riot. Economies across the developed world begin to crumble, and in the developing world riots and revolts begin for political injustice and human rights violations. Riots spark everywhere.

World governments are faced with the question, Austerity or Stimulus?

The world takes different approaches, EU countries follow the routes of austerity and the United States miraculously elects a Democratic President following the most promising rout of stimulus.

Neither approach works.

People have become too spoiled, denying them the benefits to which they feel entitled through austerity measures makes them angry, benefits from stimulus are only feeding what they supposedly deserve. Economies further fall to pieces.

This is essentially the path to the fantastic global apocalypse considered so very absurd. People do not buy things anymore, they cannot, so they loot, plunder and thieve. People take and take until there is nothing left to take, so they make do with what they can and can make.

Governing bodies blew away with the wind, now exists only the comradeship of small, local groups of people. Civilization has taken serious and strange declines, while maintaining some of the more unusual aspects. People have found a way to maintain electricity, but have lost the need to communicate. Education is not of the foremost mind, it is not practical or easily obtainable.

As for me, well, I was a jobless college graduate riddled with a mountain of student loans, but now I am a survivor. I am without need to apply the methods of money making in an evolving world to, well, to anything. I need to get food, I need to survive.

Technology is not advancing for the masses, yet individuals are advancing in the technology. Now, a small portion of individuals around the globe have surpassed any of our fathomable comprehension of what they can do within the virtual world. These are the only pseudo recognized leaders in my world. Some are kind, they supply food to the hungry in their miraculous ways, while others are cruel and cause terror to the helpless.

In my world, these rulers of the other world have become gods of sorts, gods or devils.

I had a surprising amount of fun creating this movie! Being the first video I’ve made, I am very pleased with the outcome. I had to download VideoPad Video Editor because I did not have any editing software on my computer before this project, but it was easy to use. Hours had passed without my knowing as I changed, altered, affected, and timed my images to Revolution 9 by the Beatles. I had many of the images used already on my computer or found as clip art, while the others I snagged off the Net.

Beginning this assignment, I had a specific accent I wanted to emulate in mind.

I’m from the South of the U.S., including an eight year stint in Alabama, so I felt a Southern accent would be a bit too easy. I wanted to do a British accent. Anyone at all familiar with how the Brits speak knows how drastically different the accents are from town to town, particularly from those of the North to South. When I say drastically, I mean a Londoner may travel to Newcastle and have no idea what the hell these people are saying. For a little clarity, check out hilarious reality show such as Desperate Scousewives from Liverpool (or Livapewwl), the Geordie Shore from Newcastle, The Only Way Is Essex and Educating Essex, as well as posh town London’s Made in Chelsea.

Before moving to my current location this past January, I was living in Chelsea, so I am quite familiar with this bored accent with money dripping off the vowels. For this assignment, I wanted to do a funnier variation, and wanted to speak with in the Scouse accent. This is because last year, when Desperate Scousewives first came on the air, I was highly amused with the advert that frequently played while I was watching television. By highly amused, I mean I thought it was the funniest thing I’d seen in my entire life and would go to work every night and imitate the accent.

Who better to reflect on his ideas and suggestions than a university student in our current age of technology? For this reason, several of my classmates will be sharing their reflections in blog posts today, and I am merely one of the numbers. However, this is my blog and my opinion reigns supreme in my domain (this opinion being one open to suggestions and rarely reluctant to change).

I will address a small portion of the article in this blog, a single sentence in the first paragraph, but a statement that left an impact.

“Sometimes, however, progress means looping back to earlier ideas whose vitality and importance were unrecognized or underexplored at the time, and bringing those ideas back into play in a new context.”

I find this idea to be particularly true due to the structure and environment of the topic at hand. Using cyberspace and its all suggestive definition as a tool with which people can graduate to the next level is a bit contradictory to the previous statement. This idea of taking steps and levels to progress is the primary deterrent in growth. Outlets of communication on the digital front have endless possibilities for expanse, particularly when accessible the students of higher education. These students are at a time when life is spinning, spinning and growing, and jerking and jolting. Students can accept change particularly well because of this, therefore, if a revolution in the delivery of information takes place in higher education, it will be a method accepted and enhanced by an audience unaware of what they are doing.

Expanding the possibilities and speed in connecting a message can offer growth, not guarantee it. This is due to the idea people cannot grow, but they are merely tapping into mankind’s latent potential. The capacity of human does not grow through steps or levels, progress is not linear, though, we may perceive it be. The internet and the traditional modes of sharing it uses were spread by those that see progress as something linear, often looking for step (iPad2… 3?). Building on top of oneself will eventually lead to toppling over, but surveying the area and exploring constructs started and abandoned in time past holds different possibilities.

I could continue on the route of perceiving time for a while, but it’s more along the lines of ‘nobody wants to hear your trip, man’. So, I will close by encouraging students to accept input from every direction, and with that, you will see expanse, not necessarily “growth.”

Because either way, we can find something clever and sarcastic to any question you pose. We hate those damn YouTube ads, though we search for commercials to watch on YouTube (my favorite).

Notice I said find something instead of think of something clever. I feel as though students today have every right to feel intimidated by independent thinking because there is so much out there. There is so much information accessible to all and people expose themselves to such a deep, diverse pool of information everyday. It can be intimidating because our audiences have probably seen or heard better ideas backed by more logic.

How can we possibly say anything thoughtful when everything has already been said?

Better yet, how can we simply avoid having our audience laugh in our face.

Perhaps this is why students plagiarise papers or drop out of classes. Maybe I’m full of shit, I’m sure someone else has researched and speculated on this topic more thoroughly in past.

I would also like to respond to one of the signs in the video saying most students will graduate with something like $20,000 in debt. All I have to say to them is, lucky bastards. By the time I graduate, I will be well over $150,000 in debt, and this is not Ivy League.

I honestly avoid thinking about student debt, it is quite the daunting beast. Particularly considering the fact I have no idea what I want to do with my life, but I’m not terribly concerned with it because I choose not to think about it. The biggest issue is I know I have to do something with which I can make enough money to pay my student debt. This means those heart desires in the arts and lovely lives of frolicking in the fields are not exactly feasible.

Overall, I would say being a student today is quite similar to being a student anytime. Even though we have all of these fantastic outlets of information and ways of communicating, we have the most to learn from people, and that is something that will never change.

]]>https://jacobstephanie.wordpress.com/2012/03/18/students-of-today-and-yesteryear/feed/1jacobstephanieCyberwarfare on Iranhttps://jacobstephanie.wordpress.com/2012/03/18/cyberwarfare-on-iran/
https://jacobstephanie.wordpress.com/2012/03/18/cyberwarfare-on-iran/#commentsSun, 18 Mar 2012 11:19:26 +0000http://jacobstephanie.wordpress.com/?p=917Continue reading →]]>I heard several of my classmates discuss dangerous on the web Wednesday 7,2012 under the banner Everywhere Malware. The first two presentations I heard, Anthony Radosti’s on Memories of the Nimda Virus and Adam Cicerini’s on Cyberbomb What Hit Iran Was 1 of 5, Researchers Say, really left an impression. I began to wonder about the power and possibilities of cyberwarefare. The main question on my mind after their presentations was, what about conspiracy theories? How did or could a powerful body play a role in the creation of these viruses?

AND WHAT ABOUT THE ILLUMINATI?

I have yet to uncover this mystery, but I did look into the STUXNET worm.

The worm was discovered in June 2010 by a Belarus based company. With analysis by anti-virus companies, more information about the worm was soon revealed. Having been searching and mobile for over a year without notice, the STUXNET worm was being spread with thumb drives, not over the internet. This worm was not stealing passwords or identities, it was doing something much more complex.

The worm was looking for something, an operation somewhere in the world using a specific piece of equipment. This was the Siemens supervisory control and data acquisition which is basically a controller for specific types of industry. The worm would get the code on the PLC controller to collect information when it infected the computer.

The worm would not attack every computer it infected, if the computer it reached was not its specific target, it would leave it alone. This is a computer worm, and most hackers or creators generally don’t have this sort of courtesy, but STUXNET was clearly not created by your ordinary hacker.

70% of the infections occurred in Iran, where specific Iranian components were used in certain industries that were not used anywhere else in the world. It was clear the worm was targeting Iran, and it was looking to sabotage their uranium enrichment facilities.

The mystery was revealed in fall of 2010, the worm was created to alter the speed of centrifuges used in these nuclear facilities without the operators knowledge. In essence, this worm was hitting the computers and creating physical destruction. It was intended to stay in place for years, sabotaging their computers, and would have if not for anti-virus companies doing research to protect their customers and discovering the worm.

It became clear that the STUXNET creator had to have been a large operation with plenty of insider information. The attacker had complete details of the plants and the desire to take down nuclear production in Iran, leaving the fingers pointed at the USA or Israel.

Generally speaking, everyone is quite certain the United States was responsible for the STUXNET worm, and even though it was discovered prematurely, it was still a success.

However, this cyberweapon is not a victory without consequence. The full text of STUXNET can be downloaded off the internet now, meaning this cyberweapon can be studied and used by other countries. In essence, the creator of the worm has given a how-to guide on attacking them through cyberspace.

Moral of the story, the Illuminati watches your every keystroke and can access your browsing history in a flash.

]]>https://jacobstephanie.wordpress.com/2012/03/18/cyberwarfare-on-iran/feed/1jacobstephanieBig Money, No Whammies?https://jacobstephanie.wordpress.com/2012/03/18/big-money-no-whammies/
https://jacobstephanie.wordpress.com/2012/03/18/big-money-no-whammies/#commentsSun, 18 Mar 2012 09:20:17 +0000http://jacobstephanie.wordpress.com/?p=913Continue reading →]]>Most people who dabble with the online gambling world have, in one way or another, come in contact with Bodog Entertainment Group. This also applies to most internet billionaires that have faced troubles with legality, they have likely heard the name Calvin Ayre.

Calvin Ayre was recently indicted by the U.S. Attorney in Baltimore, but why? Why would the feds want this Canadian billionaire, but more importantly, who is he and what is bodog.com?

Let me begin by stepping back a few years.

In 1996, a man named Calvin Ayre went to Costa Rica to aid the start up of the first online gambling outlets. At the time, online gambling was unheard of because of different users in the idea’s two major components: gambling and the internet. People that actually used money to bet or go to casino were generally older men, while the people using the internet were predominantly the youth. Therefore, an online gambling market did not exist.

Ayre helped to launch the first sites in 1996, and thus helped create the market.

He launched his own sports betting website in 2000, and soon after began offering other gambling methods and casino games. Users would access the site and make bets by credit cards or online checks, and winners would collect through wire transfer. Not long ago, Bodog.com had around 145,000 regular users, regular meaning each of these people be at least once a week, often times even more frequently. These regular users were betting on average 60$ for sports and 13$ on casino games. By taking bets from over 16 million customers and receiving 1.5 million different users ever month, it’s no wonder how Ayre made such ridiculous sums of money.

Why would the U.S. government care if this guy is making a fortune on the internet? He is not a citizen of the United States, nor does Bodog Entertainment Group have a physical presence in the country, so why should they care?

They care because 95% of the funds are coming out of the U.S., and Ayre is not paying a cent in taxes. Foreigners are required to pay tax on income from business done within the States, but this is where legality get tricky. Ayre does not have a physical presence in the States, so how are geographical and political boundaries drawn in cyberspace?

Title 18, Section 1084 of the U.S. Code prohibits the use of telephones or other communication devices “in interstate or foreign commerce” to take bets, so Ayre is breaking the law and he knows it.

Ayre was even quoted as stating, “we run a business that can’t actually be described as gambling in each country we operate in. But when you add it together, it’s Internet gambling.”

The U.S. Attorney in Baltimore, Rod Rosenstein state, “Sports betting is illegal in Maryland, and federal law prohibits bookmakers from flouting that law simply because they are located outside the country.”

The whole issue of the endless expanse of cyberspace makes these sorts of situation difficult to judge, and much easier for men like Calvin Ayre to break the law.

Rosenstein also said in a statement, “Many of the harms that underlie gambling prohibitions are exacerbated when the enterprises operate over the Internet without regulation.”

This is the most important issue in the case. Gambling in itself is an addiction, the internet also has the capacity to be addictive, but when the two combine, the result can be hazardous for the individual. Online gambling is much easier to be addictive than going to the casino or calling your bookie because people don’t have to leave their chair or interact with anyone. The most frightening aspect of this vice is that people can lose their lives in front of a computer screen without anyone knowing.

Mashedup Children’s Book

Mashup a children’s book based on another cultural artifact. For example, framing Dr. Who as a children’s book in the aesthetic of a Dr. Suess’s work. See example from College Humor here.

Following the College Humor examples, I decided to merge a classic Children’s book with a fantasiesque piece of culture. As you can see, I merged Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree with J.R.R. Tolkien’s series The Lord of the Rings.

Silverstein was author and illustrator of The Giving Tree, and its cover art serves as the base for manipulation here.

Front Cover of The Giving Tree

I used Pixlr to manipulate the image and add characters from The Lord of the Rings that seemed appropriate on the cover of this children’s book. The little boy reminded my of the small, innocent looking hobbit Frodo from The Lord of the Rings. The apple could be humorously replaced with the Ring, and to spice it up a bit, I decided to include a looming Gollum.

I decided to use the LEGO version of Lord of the Rings characters after remembering their existence.

Luckily, I found a LEGO Wikia containing images for all of the figures.

Main character Frodo from The Lord of the Rings in LEGO form.

LEGO version of the ring lusting Gollum from The Lord of the Rings.

When extracting the hobbit Frodo’s form to place of The Giving Tree’s cover, I hit a few snags. The magic wand tool was giving my a bit a difficulty due to the varying hues of the background image, so I did what I could with the tool and used the eraser to isolate the rest of Frodo’s form. After adjusting the LEGO sizes and placing them where I desired, I matched the color from the original background and switched to the original background layer to give a clean looking image.

I did the same when replacing the apple with the Ring.

The Ring of desire from The Lord of the Rings

The last step was to replace the title and the author.

I wanted to think of something clever pertaining to The Lord of the Rings while remaining true to the essence of The Giving Tree. With a bit of brainstorming, I settled on The Power Giving Ring. However, I nearly drove myself mad when trying to find a font style that matched the original for the alternate title.

I couldn’t find a closely matching style, so I settled on juice ITC and used Gabriola to write Tolkien. (Again, couldn’t find the font style I wanted.)

I began the process of creating this meme through a bit of brainstorming, whatever could I create a meme about? I settled on TUJ in general, but only through my image searches did I decide to focus on Americans at TUJ (though I think it applies to all students, for the most part). The next step was to decide the opinion groups for judgement. These changed a considerable amount throughout my image hunt. For example, the ‘What I think I do.’ was intended to be what ‘My friends think I do.’ while the ‘What my friends think I do.’ was going to be ‘What American society thinks I do.’.

So, I began the great image hunt.

Commuter Trains in Tokyo

Gwen Stefani with Harajuku Girls

Traditional tea

The funniest part of the image hunt was searching for the ‘What my professors think I do.’ image. I initially did a google search of “Gaijin Drunk Roppongi” with hopes of finding a suitable image, but was instead was able to find the ‘What Japanese society thinks I do.’ image instead.

I did not think to use the meme generator, so I instead used Pixilar. With just a black background, I cropped, resized and arranged the images with their appropriate captions.

Hope you get a laugh out of this!

]]>https://jacobstephanie.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/what-people-think-americans-at-tuj-do/feed/9jacobstephanieAmericans at TUJWhat I really do.What I think I do.What Japanese society thinks I do.What my friends think I do.What my professors think I do.What my parents think I do.